Lithographic apparatuses can be used, for example, in the manufacture of integrated circuits (ICs). In such a case, the mask may contain a circuit pattern corresponding to an individual layer of the IC, and this pattern can be imaged onto a target portion (e.g. comprising one or more dies) on a substrate (silicon wafer) that has been coated with a layer of radiation-sensitive material (resist). In general, a single wafer will contain a whole network of adjacent target portions that are successively irradiated via the projection system, one at a time. In one type of lithographic projection apparatus, each target portion is irradiated by exposing the entire mask pattern onto the target portion in one go; such an apparatus is commonly referred to as a wafer stepper. In an alternative apparatus, commonly referred to as a step and scan apparatus, each target portion is irradiated by progressively scanning the mask pattern under the projection beam in a given reference direction (the “scanning” direction) while synchronously scanning the substrate table parallel or anti parallel to this direction. Since, in general, the projection system will have a magnification factor M (generally <1), the speed V at which the substrate table is scanned will be a factor M times that at which the mask table is scanned.
In a manufacturing process using a lithographic projection apparatus, a mask pattern is imaged onto a substrate that is at least partially covered by a layer of radiation sensitive material (resist). Prior to this imaging step, the substrate may undergo various procedures, such as priming, resist coating and a soft bake. After exposure, the substrate may be subjected to other procedures, such as a post exposure bake (PEB), development, a hard bake and measurement/inspection of the imaged features. This array of procedures is used as a basis to pattern an individual layer of a device, e.g., an IC. Such a patterned layer may then undergo various processes such as etching, ion implantation (doping), metallization, oxidation, chemo mechanical polishing, etc., all intended to finish off an individual layer. If several layers are required, then the whole procedure, or a variant thereof, will have to be repeated for each new layer. Eventually, an array of devices will be present on the substrate (wafer). These devices are then separated from one another by a technique such as dicing or sawing, whence the individual devices can be mounted on a carrier, connected to pins, etc.
For the sake of simplicity, the projection system may hereinafter be referred to as the “lens”; however, this term should be broadly interpreted as encompassing various types of projection systems, including refractive optics, reflective optics, and catadioptric systems, for example. The radiation system may also include components operating according to any of these design types for directing, shaping or controlling the projection beam of radiation, and such components may also be referred to below, collectively or singularly, as a “lens”. Further, the lithographic apparatus may be of a type having two or more substrate tables (and/or two or more mask tables). In such “multiple stage” devices the additional tables may be used in parallel, or preparatory steps may be carried out on one or more tables while one or more other tables are being used for exposures.
The photolithographic masks referred to above comprise geometric patterns corresponding to the circuit components to be integrated onto a silicon wafer. The patterns used to create such masks are generated utilizing CAD (computer-aided design) programs, this process often being referred to as EDA (electronic design automation). Most CAD programs follow a set of predetermined design rules in order to create functional masks. These rules are set by processing and design limitations. For example, design rules define the space tolerance between circuit devices (such as gates, capacitors, etc.) or interconnect lines, so as to ensure that the circuit devices or lines do not interact with one another in an undesirable way. The design rule limitations are typically referred to as “critical dimensions” (CD). A critical dimension of a circuit can be defined as the smallest width of a line or hole or the smallest space between two lines or two holes. Thus, the CD determines the overall size and density of the designed circuit. Of course, one of the goals in integrated circuit fabrication is to faithfully reproduce the original circuit design on the wafer (via the mask).
As noted, microlithography is a central step in the manufacturing of semiconductor integrated circuits, where patterns formed on semiconductor wafer substrates define the functional elements of semiconductor devices, such as microprocessors, memory chips etc. Similar lithographic techniques are also used in the formation of flat panel displays, micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS) and other devices.
As semiconductor manufacturing processes continue to advance, the dimensions of circuit elements have continually been reduced while the amount of functional elements, such as transistors, per device has been steadily increasing over decades, following a trend commonly referred to as ‘Moore's law’. At the current state of technology, critical layers of leading-edge devices are manufactured using optical lithographic projection systems known as scanners that project a mask image onto a substrate using illumination from a deep-ultraviolet laser light source, creating individual circuit features having dimensions well below 100 nm, i.e. less than half the wavelength of the projection light.
This process in which features with dimensions smaller than the classical resolution limit of an optical projection system are printed, is commonly known as low-k1 lithography, according to the resolution formula CD=k1×λ/NA, where λ is the wavelength of radiation employed (currently in most cases 248 nm or 193 nm), NA is the numerical aperture of the projection optics, CD is the ‘critical dimension’—generally the smallest feature size printed—and k1 is an empirical resolution factor. In general, the smaller k1, the more difficult it becomes to reproduce a pattern on the wafer that resembles the shape and dimensions planned by a circuit designer in order to achieve particular electrical functionality and performance. To overcome these difficulties, sophisticated fine-tuning steps are applied to the projection system as well as to the mask design. These include, for example, but not limited to, optimization of NA and optical coherence settings, customized illumination schemes, use of phase shifting masks, optical proximity correction in the mask layout, or other methods generally defined as ‘resolution enhancement techniques’ (RET).
As one important example of RET, optical proximity correction (OPC), addresses the fact that the final size and placement of a printed feature on the wafer will not simply be a function of the size and placement of the corresponding feature on the mask. It is noted that the terms ‘mask’ and ‘reticle’ are utilized interchangeably herein. For the small feature sizes and high feature densities present on typical circuit designs, the position of a particular edge of a given feature will be influenced to a certain extent by the presence or absence of other adjacent features. These proximity effects arise from minute amounts of light coupled from one feature to another. Similarly, proximity effects may arise from diffusion and other chemical effects during post-exposure bake (PEB), resist development, and etching that generally follow lithographic exposure.
In order to ensure that the features are generated on a semiconductor substrate in accordance with the requirements of the given target circuit design, proximity effects need to be predicted utilizing sophisticated numerical models, and corrections or pre-distortions need to be applied to the design of the mask before successful manufacturing of high-end devices becomes possible. In a typical high-end design almost every feature edge requires some modification in order to achieve printed patterns that come sufficiently close to the target design. These modifications may include shifting or biasing of edge positions or line widths as well as application of ‘assist’ features that are not intended to print themselves, but will affect the properties of an associated primary feature. In the semiconductor industry, microlithography (or simply lithography) is the process of printing circuit patterns on a semiconductor wafer (for example, a silicon or GaAs wafer). Currently, optical lithography is the predominant technology used in volume manufacturing of semiconductor devices and other devices such as flat-panel displays. Such lithography employs light in the visible to the deep ultraviolet spectral range to expose photosensitive resist on a substrate. In the future, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft x-rays may be employed. Following exposure, the resist is developed to yield a resist image.
Prior to discussing the present invention, a brief discussion regarding the overall simulation and imaging process is provided. FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary lithographic projection system 10. The major components are a light source 12, which may be, for example, a deep-ultraviolet excimer laser source, or a source of other wavelengths, including EUV wavelength, illumination optics, which define the partial coherence, and which may include specific source shaping optics 14, 16a and 16b; a mask or reticle 18; and projection optics 16c that produce an image of the reticle pattern onto the wafer plane 22. An adjustable filter or aperture 20 at the pupil plane may restrict the range of beam angles that impinge on the wafer plane 22, where the largest possible angle defines the numerical aperture of the projection optics NA=sin(Θmax).
An exemplary flow chart for simulating lithography in a lithographic projection apparatus is illustrated in FIG. 2. A source model 31 represents optical characteristics (including radiation intensity distribution and/or phase distribution) of the source. A projection optics model 32 represents optical characteristics (including changes to the radiation intensity distribution and/or the phase distribution caused by the projection optics) of the projection optics. A design layout model 35 represents optical characteristics (including changes to the radiation intensity distribution and/or the phase distribution caused by a given design layout 33) of a design layout, which is the representation of an arrangement of features on or formed by a patterning device. An aerial image 36 can be simulated from the design layout model 35, the projection optics model 32 and the design layout model 35. A resist image 37 can be simulated from the aerial image 36 using a resist model 37. Simulation of lithography can, for example, predict contours and CDs in the resist image.
More specifically, it is noted that the source model 31 can represent the optical characteristics of the source that include, but not limited to, NA-sigma (σ) settings as well as any particular illumination source shape (e.g. off-axis radiation sources such as annular, quadrupole, and dipole, etc.). The projection optics model 32 can represent the optical characteristics of the of the projection optics that include aberration, distortion, refractive indexes, physical sizes, physical dimensions, etc. The design layout model 35 can also represent physical properties of a physical patterning device, as described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,587,704, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety. The objective of the simulation is to accurately predict, for example, edge placements, aerial image intensity slopes and CDs, which can then be compared against an intended design. The intended design is generally defined as a pre-OPC design layout which can be provided in a standardized digital file format such as GDSII or OASIS or other file format.
When the resist is exposed by the projected image and thereafter baked and developed, the resist tends to undergo complex chemical and physical changes. The final resist patterns are typically characterized by their critical dimensions, or CD, usually defined as the width of a resist feature at the resist-substrate interface. While the CD is usually intended to represent the smallest feature being patterned in the given device, in practice the term CD is used to describe the linewidth of any resist feature.
In most exposure tools, the optical system reduces the size of the pattern from the mask level to the wafer level by a reduction factor, typically 4 or 5. Because of this the pattern at the mask level is typically larger than the desired pattern at the wafer level, which relaxes the dimensional control tolerances required at the mask level and improves the yield and manufacturability of the mask-making process. This reduction factor of the exposure tool introduces certain confusion in referring to “the dimension” of the exposure process. Herein, features sizes and dimensions refer to wafer-level feature sizes and dimensions, and the “minimum feature size” refers to a minimum feature at the wafer level.
For an exposure process to pattern a device correctly, the CDs of all critical structures in the device must be patterned to achieve the design target dimensions. Since it is practically impossible to achieve every target CD with no errors, the device is designed with a certain tolerance for CD errors. In this case, the pattern is considered to be acceptable if the CDs of all critical features are within these predefined tolerances. For the exposure process to be viable in a manufacturing environment, the full CD distribution must fall within the tolerance limits across a range of process conditions that represents the typical range of process variations expected to occur in the fab. For example, the actual doses of nominally identical process conditions can vary up to ±5% from the nominal dose; the actual focal planes of nominally identical process conditions can vary up to ±100 nm from the nominal focal plane.
Factors that limit or degrade the fidelity of the pattern transfer process include imperfections in the mask-making process, in the projection optics, in the resist process, and in the control of the interaction between the projected light and the film stacks formed on the wafer. However, even with a perfect mask, perfect optics, a perfect resist system, and perfect substrate reflectivity control, image fidelity becomes difficult to maintain as the dimensions of the features being imaged become smaller than the wavelength of light used in the exposure tool. For exposure processes using 193 nm illumination sources, features as small as 65 nm are desired. In this deep sub-wavelength regime, the pattern transfer process becomes highly non-linear, and the dimensions of the final pattern at the wafer level become a very sensitive function not only of the size of the pattern at the mask level, but also of the local environment of the feature, where the local environment extends out to a radius of roughly five to ten times the wavelength of light. Given the very small feature sizes compared to the wavelength, even identical structures on the mask will have different wafer-level dimensions depending on the sizes and proximities of neighboring features, and even features that are not immediately adjacent but still within the proximity region defined by the optics of the exposure tool. These optical proximity effects are well known in the literature.
In an effort to improve imaging quality and minimize high non-linearity in the pattern transfer process, current processing techniques employ various RET and OPC, a general term for any technology aimed at overcoming proximity effects. One of the simplest forms of OPC is selective bias. Given a CD vs. pitch curve, all of the different pitches could be forced to produce the same CD, at least at best focus and exposure, by changing the CD at the mask level. Thus, if a feature prints too small at the wafer level, the mask level feature would be biased to be slightly larger than nominal, and vice versa. Since the pattern transfer process from mask level to wafer level is non-linear, the amount of bias is not simply the measured CD error at best focus and exposure times the reduction ratio, but with modeling and experimentation an appropriate bias can be determined. Selective bias is an incomplete solution to the problem of proximity effects, particularly if it is only applied at the nominal process condition. Even though such bias could, in principle, be applied to give uniform CD vs. pitch curves at best focus and exposure, once the exposure process varies from the nominal condition, each biased pitch curve will respond differently, resulting in different process windows for the different features. Therefore, the “best” bias to give identical CD vs. pitch may even have a negative impact on the overall process window, reducing rather than enlarging the focus and exposure range within which all of the target features print on the wafer within the desired process tolerance.
Other more complex OPC techniques have been developed for application beyond the one-dimensional bias example above. A two-dimensional proximity effect is line end shortening. Line ends have a tendency to “pull back” from their desired end point location as a function of exposure and focus. In many cases, the degree of end shortening of a long line end can be several times larger than the corresponding line narrowing. This type of line end pull back can result in catastrophic failure of the devices being manufactured if the line end fails to completely cross over the underlying layer it was intended to cover, such as a polysilicon gate layer over a source-drain region. Since this type of pattern is highly sensitive to focus and exposure, simply biasing the line end to be longer than the design length is inadequate because the line at best focus and exposure, or in an underexposed condition, would be excessively long, resulting either in short circuits as the extended line end touches neighboring structures, or unnecessarily large circuit sizes if more space is added between individual features in the circuit. Since one of the key goals of integrated circuit design and manufacturing is to maximize the number of functional elements while minimizing the area required per chip, adding excess spacing is a highly undesirable solution.
Two-dimensional OPC approaches have been developed to help solve the line end pull back problem. Extra structures (or assist features) known as “hammerheads” or “serifs” are routinely added to line ends to effectively anchor them in place and provide reduced pull back over the entire process window. Even at best focus and exposure these extra structures are not resolved but they alter the appearance of the main feature without being fully resolved on their own. A “main feature” as used herein means a feature intended to print on a wafer under some or all conditions in the process window. Assist features can take on much more aggressive forms than simple hammerheads added to line ends, to the extent the pattern on the mask is no longer simply the desired wafer pattern upsized by the reduction ratio. Assist features such as serifs can be applied to many more cases than simply reducing line end pull back. Inner or outer serifs can be applied to any edge, especially two dimensional edges, to reduce corner rounding or edge extrusions. With enough selective biasing and assist features of all sizes and polarities, the features on the mask bear less and less of a resemblance to the final pattern desired at the wafer level. In general, the mask pattern becomes a pre-distorted version of the wafer-level pattern, where the distortion is intended to counteract or reverse the pattern deformation that will occur during the lithographic process to produce a pattern on the wafer that is as close to the one intended by the designer as possible.
Many of these OPC techniques can be used together on a single mask with phase-shifting structures of different phases added in as well for both resolution and process window enhancement. The simple task of biasing a one-dimensional line becomes increasingly complicated as two-dimensional structures must be moved, resized, enhanced with assist features, and possibly phase-shifted without causing any conflict with adjoining features. Due to the extended proximity range of deep sub-wavelength lithography, changes in the type of OPC applied to a feature can have unintended consequences for another feature located within half a micron to a micron. Since there are likely to be many features within this proximity range, the task of optimizing OPC decoration becomes increasingly complex with the addition of more aggressive approaches. Each new feature that is added has an effect on other features, which then can be re-corrected in turn, and the results can be iterated repeatedly to converge to a mask layout where each feature can be printed in the manner in which it was originally intended while at the same time contributing in the proper manner to the aerial images of its neighboring features such that they too are printed within their respective tolerances.